Chasing the Dark

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Book: Chasing the Dark Read Free
Author: Sam Hepburn
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me out. But I couldn’t let Oz down. Not now, not ever. He was all I’d got.
    When George called me down to eat I mumbled something about cutting myself on some barbed wire and asked if they’d got a first-aid kit. Doreen pointed to thecupboard under the sink. I sorted myself a plaster and gave a mental thumbs-up when I saw all the bandages, antiseptic creams and packets of gauze.
    Weighed down by what I was planning, I sat at the table watching Doreen dish up some strange-looking stew that had dark slimy things floating round with the meat. When I asked what they were she said they were prunes . Weird. She’d got her own catering company, making dinners for people who wanted to impress their bosses without getting their hands dirty, and it looked like we were getting the leftovers from some client’s party. Still, anything was better than cold baked beans out of the tin, which is what I’d been living on since Mum died. My eyes flicked to the extension off the kitchen which was fitted out with fridges, freezers and stainless steel units stacked with all Doreen’s catering stuff. I wasn’t supposed to go in there and as for Oz . . . well, I won’t mention what Doreen said she’d do to him if he even took a sniff in that direction.
    Mum said her relationship with Doreen had always been tricky but it crashed and burned when Mum went and called her a neurotic, stuck-up, pain in the neck. Spot on, if you ask me. But if you’re singing at your sister’s wedding there’s probably some musicians’ law that says you’re s’posed to turn the microphone off before you start slagging off the bride. Mum was sorry afterwards and said she’d only done it because she’d had a bit too much to drink. Trouble was, Mum had done a lot of stupid things because she’d had a bit too much to drink, like cadging that lift home from the Trafalgar Arms withsome bloke she didn’t even know and getting smashed up in a car crash. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my mum and she loved me, and just thinking about her is like getting tasered and thrown against an electric fence. But what with the problems with Eddy, the money worries and her getting so depressed all the time, I’d been scared for a while that something bad might happen to her. And then it did.
    George was doing his best, piling veg on my plate and asking if I was musical like Mum and what my favourite subjects were at school. But Doreen tapping her nails on her wine glass and giving me the evil eye didn’t exactly help to keep the chit-chat flowing. You’d never think she was Mum’s sister, not in a million years. I mean, Doreen was fair where Mum had been dark and she was bony where Mum had been what she called ‘curvy’, and she had a hard pointy face and small blue-ish eyes, whereas Mum’s face had been soft and pretty and her big dark eyes had been her best feature. Doreen also had tiny lines round her mouth that got deeper whenever she looked at me.
    George was a big bloke, ex-Royal Engineers, but one squawk from Doreen and he turned into a total wuss. He even called her Dilly – which made me want to puke. Though to be fair, I didn’t rate his chances if he ever crossed her. He didn’t seem to notice he’d married a harpy and he spent most of his time gazing at her as if he couldn’t believe his luck. But he was looking at me now, telling me he’d be going to Germany soon to pitch for some big contract and he was glad Doreen would have me forcompany while he was away. You should have seen the look she gave him.
    Guess what, Doreen? Being stuck with you isn’t top of my wish list either .
    Still, at least while I was here no one was going to be asking me if I wanted to ‘talk about it’. ’Course I didn’t. What was there to say? Mum was dead. End of.
    I offered to wash up. Doreen wasn’t keen; she said she liked things

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